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Invoking the spiritual in campus life and leadership
In student affairs, we recognize our role as educators (Roper, 1996). Palmer's words about the significance of the inward journey apply to student affairs educators as well. Good student affairs leadership comes from the identity and integrity of the leader-- educator. Just as we in student affairs emphasize educating the whole student, we need to attend to our whole person in the way we structure student affairs organizations, collaborate with our colleagues, and educate students.
These examples demonstrate how higher education has introduced aspects of the spiritual into its ways of functioning. But these practices are often confined to a few pioneering student affairs administrators and faculty. If, on a widespread basis, the hope is to create university climates that encourage faculty, student affairs staff, support staff, administrators, and students to express their complete selves in the work they do in the institution, then higher education institutions need leaders at all levels who create the conditions for it to happen. Institutions of higher education need leaders who have themselves made the inward journey and who operate from their inner power, who have incorporated the spiritual dimension in their ways of leading.
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The term leader as used here, and throughout this essay, includes positional leaders, such as vice presidents and directors, coordinators and deans. It also includes student affairs professionals who are endorsed as leaders by their peers because of their exceptional service to others. Finally, it comprises those student affairs professionals who, because of their deep passion for a project, cause, or issue, take leadership in forging institutional change. Thus, leader as defined here is inclusive of all student affairs staff who through their beliefs and actions contribute to making the campus community a place of meaning and purpose.
THE ROLE OF SPIRITUALITY IN STUDENT AFFAIRS LEADERSHIP
The findings of the new science are beginning to reshape Western society's perspectives on leadership. The Newtonian-based, hierarchical, command and control notions of leadership are being extended and refrained to include leadership that is relational, empowering, and based in service and stewardship (Block, 1993; Burns, 1978; Greenleaf, 1970). This new emphasis has spawned much dialogue about the role of spirituality in leadership.
A pervasive theme in the literature is that leadership that incorporates the spiritual dimension is grounded in the leader's selfknowledge (Hagberg, 1994; Jaworski, 1998; Lopez, 1995; Palmer, 1992; Zohar, 1997). Janet Hagberg (1994) defined soul leaders as those who have plumbed their depths, have faced their demons, and have embraced their shadows (i.e., their insecurities, fears, prejudices, childhood wounds, etc.). The process of this inward journey is about "the formation of the human heart, the reformation of the human heart, and the rescuing of the human heart from all of its deformations" (Palmer, 1992, p. 2). As Annie Dillard (quoted in Palmer, 1992) described, this downward journey, through the darkness and terror, enables people to discover that deep place where they are in connection with all of humanity. Through the process of this inward journey people are able to connect with their multiple selves and experience a sense of wholeness.
